Three Microsoft bulletins for month three's Patch Tuesday

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 09 March 2011 09:44

Business IT - Security

Microsoft has released three security bulletins this month, one rated critical, the other two important.

The sole critical bulletin released by Microsoft on March's Patch Tuesday relates to Windows. It addresses two separate vulnerabilities, one in Windows Media Player, the other in Windows Media Center. The more severe vulnerability of the pair can be exploited via a maliciously crafted Microsoft Digital Video Recording.

The bulletin applies to Windows XP (excluding XP Home SP3 and XP Tablet PC Edition SP3), Vista, Windows 7, and Server 2008 R2 (excluding Server Core installations). Microsoft officials said the deployment of this bulletin should be prioritised by systems administrators.

A second bulletin for Windows is rated important, and concerns the Remote Desktop Connection client versions 5.2, 6.0, 6.1, 7.0 that is part of XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, and Windows 7. (Certain versions are not affected, such as Server 2003 x64 Edition SP2 and Windows 7 SP1.)

The vulnerability can allow remote code execution if a user opens a legitimate Remote Desktop configuration (.rdp) file located in the same network folder as a specially crafted library file. This is another example of a DLL preloading attack, as outlined by Microsoft last August.

There's just one bulletin for Microsoft Office this month. Rated important, it is specific to Groove 2007 SP2 (ie, not the original Groove 2007, or Groove 2010) and is another DLL preloading attack.

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